glorycloud's Diaryland Diary

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The Western Canon Tag

This morning I was watching Booktube and some booktubers were doing a tag called The Western Canon Tag. I jotted down what books I have READ that I would list as my personal Western Canon.

The Prompts:
1. If you could choose 20 books to represent your reading of Western literature, how would you choose them? What would you look for?
I would chose books that have shaped my world and life view as a Christian and a diary writer. I also would chose books that I have read and have stuck with me over my reading life (I am 70 years old). There are few books that have impacted me spiritually and intellectually over the years.

2. After choosing your 20 books, what blind-spots have you noticed? I am blind to my blind spots.

3. What 20 books would you choose to represent your reading of Western literature?
Here is the list I made of 20 books I would list in my Personal Canon-
1. The Bible
2. 'Conferences' John Cassian year 435 Early Ascetic Spirituality
3. 'The Rule of St. Benedict' Benedict died of a fever in 547 Monastic Theology
4. 'Moral Reflections on the Book of Job' Gregory the Great 590 to 604 Christian Asceticism
5. 'Summa Theologica' St Thomas Aquinas 1266-1272 Medieval Theology
6. 'On the Song of Songs Sermons' Bernard of Clairvaux Contemplative Prayer
7. 'Institutes of the Christian Religion' John Calvin 1536 to 1559 Calvinism
8. 'The Collected Works of St. John of the Cross' St John of the Cross died in 1591
9. 'The Works of William Perkins' William Perkins (1558-1602) Father of English 17th century Puritanism
10. 'The Works of Jonathan Edwards' 18th century America The Great Awakening birth of Evangelicalism
11. 'Essays & Lectures' Ralph Waldo Emerson 1849 American Transcendentalism
12. 'Huckleberry Finn' A Novel by Mark Twain
13. 'The Wasteland And Other Poems' by T. S. Eliot
14. 'The Portrait of a Lady' A Novel by Henry James
15. 'Nana' A Novel by Emile Zola
16. 'Middlemarch' A Novel by George Eliot
17. 'The Dharma Bums' A Novel by Jack Kerouac
18. 'Howl' poetry by Allen Ginsberg
19. 'The Tunnel' A Novel by William H. Gass
20. 'Reformed Dogmatics' Four Volumes by Herman Bavinck Dutch Reformed Theology

3:45 p.m. - 2022-09-29

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